Paper Call:Medievalism and Digital Gaming (Book)

Posted on April 03, 2011 by Edith L. Crowe

Dan Kline of the University of Alaska is “soliciting 500-word proposals for a volume dealing with the Middle Ages, medievalism, and contemporary digital gaming, broadly defined.” An interesting coincidence, given the Mythcon theme this year. Slightly outside the bull’s-eye of our core interests, but I know some of you out there will be interested. May 1, 2011 deadline.

All Your History are Belong to Us: Medievalism and Digital Gaming

The Middle Ages remains a vibrant presence in contemporary culture, and while cinematic medievalism has been intensively investigated in the last decade, digital gaming has received relatively little attention despite its widespread cultural impact. For example, the video game market now grosses more domestically than Hollywood, and World of Warcraft boasts more than 12 million monthly paying subscribers (25 million total units). Gaming theory too has seen its share of innovation, and digital technologies are now a regular feature of higher education and cultural studies. Medievalism, in its various guises, has also been the subject of intense scrutiny in anthologies by Anke Bernau and Bettina Bildhauer, Medieval Film (2009); Karl Fugelso, Memory and Medievalism (2007); and David Marshall, Mass Market Medieval: Essays on the Middle Ages in Popular Culture (2007). Further, the turn toward speculative medievalisms, object-oriented philosophy, and Actor-Network Theory has initiated new methodologies, raised new questions, and offered new possibilities for understanding actor-actant networks and overcoming the subject-object distinction, all of which enrich our understanding of digital and historical realities and problematize traditional understandings of subjectivity, temporality, and textuality.

A few of the more popular medievally-inflected gaming titles (and series) include: